Hougomont – Running the Easting Down

‘Running The Easting Down’ was a term used by sailors to describe the long haul from the Atlantic Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope before the Roaring Forties, towards Australia and onwards to Cape Horn. These strong westerly winds allowed the sailing ship to travel these long distances in fast time.

This painting of the 4-masted barque Hougomont was inspired  by stories told to me by Captain Eben Anderson, an apprentice in this ship during the years 1912 – 1914. He described the way her master, Captain McDonald chose to run before a gale. ‘All sails set upon the main except the mainsail’ is not prescribed in Tait’s Seamanship’ as the correct procedure; nor would a candidate for second mate’s certificate have been wise to explain to the examiner that it kept the ship balanced but as Eben explained, ‘old Mac was an excellent seaman and had many ideas of his own how to get the best out of his ship’.

Hougomont, built in 1897, spent most of her life under the ownership of J. Hardie & Co. of Glasgow, until Finnish shipowner Gustaf Erikson, bought her in 1924. In 1932 she was dismasted in the Great Australian Bight on the way to load grain in Spencer Gulf.

Superb seamanship allowed her to make Port Adelaide under Jury Rig. It was considered too costly to re-rig her so her sails, and any fitting that was re-usable was stripped and taken back to her home port, Mariehamn, in the Erikson 4-masted barque Herzogin Cecilie. Her figurehead and poop skylight now reside in the Alands  Maritime Museum.

Her hull was towed to Stenhouse Bay at the tip of Yorke Peninsular and sunk as a breakwater adjacent to the Gypsum loading jetty.